Government of Macao Special Administrative Region (SAR) is mulling an adjustment of the ratio of local and non-local students in public tertiary educational institutions, in an attempt to recruit more high-quality students from outside Macao, the Macao Post Daily reported on Wednesday.

The newspaper quoted Sou Chio Fai, Director of Macao's Tertiary Education Service Office (GAES), as saying that his office would first talk to the local public tertiary educational institutions to gather their opinions on the matter.

An agreement between the government and public tertiary institutions regulates that the total number of non-local students in bachelor, master and doctoral degree courses must not be more than 15 percent of their enrolment.

However, Sou said, as the number of local graduates from secondary schools has decreased in the past few years, the SAR government and the public tertiary educational institutions should think about whether the existing ratio is reasonable or not.

Sou, who made the remark yesterday after hosting the opening ceremony of a Portuguese-language colloquium, said he believed Macao's public tertiary education institutions could attract more high-quality students from abroad, adding that higher quality of the students would benefit the development of the local tertiary education sector.

There are four public tertiary education institutions in Macao, namely University of Macao (UM), Macao Polytechnic Institution ( IPM), Institute for Tourism Studies (IFT) and the Macao Public Security Forces Academy.